


keep holding on

by MaddieandChimney



Series: Maddie Buckley Week 2020 [6]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Other, TW: Blood, tw: car accident, tw: earthquake, tw: injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: Maddie Buckley Week Day 6 - “Just, hold on.” + hurt.Buck can't help but blame himself when he holds his sister's hand as tightly as he possibly can, willing her to wake up, to just open her eyes.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Howie "Chimney" Han, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: Maddie Buckley Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861234
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Buck feels the confusion rise inside of him, alongside the panic as he holds Maddie’s hand in his own. She had been fine in the moments before, she had been walking around, helping people, she had been given someone CPR… she had been _fine_ but now…

The tears that fall down his cheeks mix easily with the blood that still drips from his own head but he’s not leaving her side, not until he knows she’s going to be okay. He wants to scream that at the paramedic who is trying everything in her power to move him away from where he needs to be right then. Maddie is his big sister, she’d refuse to leave his side if this was the other way around. He still can’t shake the awful Deja vu that pulsates through his mind as he looks at her. Not again, she can’t be hurt again.

Only this time, he can place the blame easier on himself. He hadn’t swerved in time, he should tried harder, should have had the hindsight to know exactly what was going to happen. He was a firefighter, he should have known better, should have pressed on his brake a little harder the second the earthquake hit. Maybe then they wouldn’t have collided with the car in front, and maybe then the second car wouldn’t have hit the passenger side and _maybe_ , just maybe, Maddie would have been okay.

He had checked on her the moment his own eyes opened and through his shock, he had looked over at Maddie and made sure she was as okay as she could be. Her head had been bleeding, her face pale, she had been holding her arm as though it hurt. But she had still stepped out of the car, she had still promised him she was okay before she had run off to check on other people. He had even admired her for just a second, watching her in ‘nurse mode’. Until suddenly, she wasn’t.

Buck hadn’t made it in time to catch her before she collapsed to the ground, he hates how that brings up a whole new self-loathing inside of him because he had promised himself that if she ever needed him, he’d always be there to catch her when she fell. He had failed her, himself… Chimney.

“Maddie, hey—just, hold on, okay? Hold on for me, for Chimney… we need you.” Her eyes remain closed, even as they lift her up onto the stretcher and his hand is yanked from hers by the motion of the paramedics moving her as quickly as they can towards the back of the ambulance. Every single second he doesn’t see her eyes or hear her voice, it just feels as though his world is coming to an end. He’d spent three years too long not talking to her and now the past two and a half years of having her in his life had been amazing. She was happy, she was the happiest he had ever seen her, especially recently… she deserved better than some car accident taking her out.

It’s not until he’s sitting in the back of the ambulance, shrugging off the paramedic once more (he doesn’t deserve to be checked over, he decides, not yet, not until he knows his sister is going to be okay), that he pulls out his phone with shaking hands. His heart thumps against his chest, the tears falling freely before he presses a familiar name, bringing the phone to his ear. “Buck? I’ve been calling you both, are you okay? I’m just heading into work, I’m guessing they’ll need us—Buck?”

It takes him a second, just listening to the chipper tone in Chimney’s voice before he takes a breath, “There was an accident.” Four words that seem to bring him back into reality as he looks over at his deathly pale sister, already hooked up to far too many wires for his liking before he takes a breath, “W-we were driving… when the earthquake hit. I couldn’t—I didn’t react quickly enough, I should have—”

“Buck.” The tone on the other end is serious, perhaps more so than he’s ever heard from his friend before, “Maddie’s pregnant. She’s ten weeks pregnant. You need to… what hospital are you going to? I need you to stay with her until I can get there, okay?”

A few words and Buck just wants to break down, he wants to curl up in a ball and forget the world but instead, he just stares at Maddie. She had been so happy lately, even glowing… she was having a baby, she was getting everything she had ever wanted and—

Buck’s bottom lip trembles, closing his eyes as tightly as he possibly can, “I-I’ve got her, I’ve… I’ve got her.”


	2. Chapter 2

Buck can barely remember arriving at the hospital, although the memories of doctors and nurses trying to push him away from his sister when he refuses to leave her side. He remembers his promise to Chimney, along with the silent promises he had made to himself that he would protect his sister no matter what. He told Chimney he would stay with her until he got there, he has to stay.

She’s pregnant. He has to repeat that new piece of information in his head over and over again as he just stares at the way the doctors surround her, working on her as he finds himself pushed into a corner of the room. He’s not letting her out of his sight, he has to stay, has he even told them that she’s pregnant? He can’t remember the last time any words fell from his lips, his breathing heavy and his body trembling before he whispers, “She’s pregnant.”

Through all the noise in the room, no one hears him, his eyes moving from each of the people in the room as they touch his still unconscious sister. He watches as the scissors move to cut open her top, his eyes landing on her stomach that shows no signs of the fact she’s pregnant just yet. But that’s his niece or his nephew growing in there, “She’s pregnant!” His voice is louder that time, enough that one of the women in the room pauses.

“How far?”

“Ten weeks. She’s… she’s ten weeks pregnant. She-I-I didn’t… I didn’t know…” It’s only when he hears the familiar voice of his friend and colleague that he tears his eyes away from the woman in front of him, feeling his knees buckle beneath him before everything goes dark.

When his eyes open, the bright lights of a hospital room shine above him, a moment of panic when he forgets for just a second, how he got there in the first place. His head is spinning, his chest tight as his fists clench around the fabric of the bed sheets beneath him. Maddie. He had promised he would protect her, even more so when he had wrapped his arms around her in the snow that fateful day. He feels that foreboding sense of failure burning through him. It’s completely illogical, he had no way of controlling the events of the day or how the other car hit theirs but she had always protected him.

“You’re awake.” Buck slowly rises to sit up, ignoring the pain it causes when he looks at the man standing at the doorway. Chimney’s arms are folded, there’s dark circles under his eyes and he somehow looks as though he’s aged ten years since Buck saw him last. There’s a distant look in his eyes that forces Buck to pause for a second, holding his breath as he awaits the bad news. He had almost lost Maddie once that he knows of, perhaps countless times over her years with Doug when he was clueless to what was going on behind closed doors. It would be cruel to take her away when she has such a good life.

Chimney must recognise the way his entire body tenses, just waiting for the words he doesn’t want to hear fall from the other man’s lips. Maddie’s gone. And if Maddie is gone, that means the baby he never even knew existed until a few hours ago must be too… he’d never get a chance to be an uncle or to see Maddie be the amazing mom he knew she was capable of being. “Maddie’s okay.” The words don’t register in his mind for a moment, his thoughts too busy pulling out the worst case scenario because why would Chimney be there in his room if Maddie was okay? Why would he—

“Maddie’s okay?” He finally _hears_ the words for what they are, desperate eyes seeking out Chimney’s as he lets out a long breath, bottom lip trembling as the tears fall. “She’s—she’s alive?”

A nod, until he’s standing in front of him, “They rushed her into surgery, she had a brain bleed—what are the chances of the both of us having had brain surgery?” He tries to make a joke in the same way he always does, Buck had learnt that much about the paramedic, humour was a tool used to cover up the greatest of emotions. “She broke her arm and her collarbone but she’s going to be okay. And so far—for now, it looks as though the baby is, too.” The use of the words ‘for now’ causes a whole new level of pain, not knowing if Maddie would survive losing her baby. She would have been so excited to become a mother, he had teased her a few days before at the mall when she had paused at some baby vests, had pretended not to see the tears in her eyes when she ran her fingers over the tiny item of clothing. Buck had accused her of being broody, completely unknowing of that fact she was already expecting.

“You’re going to be okay too, nasty concussion.” Chimney continues, his words breathy and the fear finally showing on his face as he frowns, “Fractured some ribs, a few superficial cuts and bruises—you both made it. You pulled through.” In some way, he uses the exact same words that Buck had once told his sister as they sat in the back of an ambulance and she learnt that Chimney was still alive.

“I need to see her, I need—” It’s not that he didn’t believe the other man but until he saw his sister with his own two eyes, somehow it just seemed too good to be true.

Chimney only smiles, resting a hand on his back when he helps him down from the hospital bed, “I know, why do you think I stole a wheelchair? Just don’t let a nurse see us, you are on very strict bed rest after you collapsed in the ER.”


End file.
